Bulk delete many songs from iPhone 6 (iOS 11.0.3) in iTunes 12.7

[RyanGermann]

EDIT: Clarification to OP title, and sorry I wasn't clear: I want to delete HUNDREDS of songs at once: I've corrected the metadata on the files on my PC, and want to delete songs with bad metadata off the device and put the fixed files onto the device in their place. Inline edits in ITALIC

I haven't tried to add or delete music on my iPhone with iTunes for quite a few months now.

Suddenly, it's completely impossible.

I'm sure there's a solution by some arcane combination of settings on the device, settings in iTunes, waving a chicken and dancing naked in the pale moon light...

Could someone PLEASE provide a link? Searches turn up so many false positives it's daunting.

Thanks in advance.

...and to think I was going to upgrade my iPhone 6 Plus to an iPhone 8 Plus 256 gig so I can put even more of my music on my device... but this kind of CRAP and the general availability of 256 gig microSD cards gives me SERIOUS second thoughts about continuing with iPhone.

 

[Tartarus]

Re: Delete songs from iPhone 6 (iOS 11.0.3)

I’ve read your post 2 times now and still don’t understand what your issue is.

Just go to the song, tap it, tap the 3 dots on the lower right of the screen and choose the Remove option.

It’s easy.

 

[RyanGermann]

Re: Delete songs from iPhone 6 (iOS 11.0.3)

Sorry, I want to delete the files from the device in iTunes in bulk, then copy them all back on. I can't copy files onto the device in iTunes either.

 

[Sherry_B]

You can't do it like that. Perform an encrypted backup of your phone, then factory reset and set the phone up as new. Fix the music files on your hard drive (you did this), restore from backup and as the last step manually re-add your music. Waving a chicken and dancing skyclad in the moonlight is optional.

 

[RyanGermann]

But I COULD do it like that before... done it loads of times... what happened?

Maybe I should downgrade to iTunes 11?

 

[Sherry_B]

Sounds like it is still trying to read the bad metadata. Either that is corrupted or something else is corrupted. You can try completely removing iTunes and reinstalling a fresh copy (there's a list of steps that needs to be followed to properly uninstall it from your computer) to see if that helps. I cannot guarantee that saved music lists won't disappear in this process.

Completely read through all of the steps first before following any instructions; https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204275

 

[doogald]

Are you syncing with iTunes, or are you using Apple Music, or are you using iCloud Music Library?

If syncing with iTunes, it seems that the easiest way is to connect the phone to the computer, select it (it's a little icon to the right of the dropdown at the top left of the iTunes window), click "Music" under "Summary", turn off "Sync music" and then click the "Apply" button bottom right (which will remove all synced music from the iPhone), and then turn sync music back on again and click "apply" again to sync the music back on. (it will take a while, obviously).

If you are using iCloud Music Library, turn that off in settings / music, do the opposite of what I describe above (ie, turn on music syncing, then turn it off), and then turn on iCloud Music Library again.

But, here's the thing: if you edited the metadata on iTunes on your PC, the next time that you sync music, it should replace the songs that you changed. Still, what I describe will remove all music and then put it back.

If you are using Apple Music (which, from your description, doesn't seem to be the case) - I have no idea. I've never used it myself.

 

[scruffypig]

An easy way to delete your entire music library on you iPhone is to go to Settings>General>iPhone Storage>Music. You can delete all songs by sliding “All Songs” left and selecting “Delete”. You can also delete by artist the same way.

 

[Sherry_B]

An easy way to delete your entire music library on you iPhone is to go to Settings>General>iPhone Storage>Music. You can delete all songs by sliding “All Songs” left and selecting “Delete”. You can also delete by artist the same way.

Meh. It'll only let me hit Like once.

 

[RyanGermann]

Thanks very much: that is certainly a bit buried and not where I’d expect it to be, but it is sensible to manage storage centrally like that if that’s what they’ve decided to do.

Is it true then that deletion of media from the device via iTunes is no longer supported? If so is it also true that ADDING music to the iPhone from within iTunes is no longer supported... you do it from within the iPhone music app or settings or...

Because when I try to drag files from my library onto the device... nuthin’.

 

[doogald]

TIs it true then that deletion of media from the device via iTunes is no longer supported? If so is it also true that ADDING music to the iPhone from within iTunes is no longer supported... you do it from within the iPhone music app or settings or...

Not, it's not true. It still works that way (in theory.) But....

Because when I try to drag files from my library onto the device... nuthin’.

The same thing happened to me when I set my phone up as new the other day. Things I dragged in just never updated. I ended up resetting the phone to scratch, restoring again, and then drag and drop worked. (I was trying to copy ringtones over, but same thing.)

iTunes 12.7 is a bit of a train wreck. I sync my whole music library to the phone from iTunes, rather than manual drag and drop music, but the other thing that I noticed is that the initial sync took forever, with "copying files" (while it wasn't actually copying files) or updating artwork taking hours before I finally gave up. The solution for me was to do the dance I described above: stop syncing music, apply, sync music again, apply, and now it works (except it keeps insisting that the phone is set to backup to the computer rather than iCloud but, thankfully, iCloud backup keeps happening when i plug in the phone.)

 

[Sherry_B]

Because when I try to drag files from my library onto the device... nuthin’.

I did it that way when I first got an iPhone. I no longer do it that way because it just doesn't work properly. This is how I do it;

• I have one folder on my media drive with just the songs in mp3 format that I want on my phone.
• I have the path to that folder set in iTunes.
• In iTunes, "Manually manage music and videos" is turned off.
• I add my music by going into iTunes and at the top choosing File and either Add File to Library or Add Folder to Library. I choose the file or the subfolder from within the folder (same folder set in the path in iTunes) and then sit back and allow iTunes to add what I chose.
• Once you set it up this way and you've manually added all of your music, then any time after that when you wipe your phone all you have to do after set up is hit that Sync button and iTunes will add every song from that folder.

It took me awhile, through headaches and hair loss, to figure out that dragging and dropping music over to iTunes was the worst way to add my songs.

Takes 5 to 6 minutes to factory reset the phone and reinstall from backup, but syncing your music after setup will take awhile if you have a lot of music to put on your phone. I have over 4k songs and will more than likely be adding tons more now that I have tons more space with my new 8 Plus.

 

[RyanGermann]

I appreciate the responses.

But these workarounds are, in a word, appalling.

Oooh! I just thought of a new word! When a huge company cripples elegantly simple functionality to drive a strategic agenda without proper consideration of their customers... it's "appleing". And also frustrating, maddening, and a little pathetic.

Just blowing off steam while I reassess what to do with the literally 1500 bucks I've been saving up for two years to buy the dream iphone that has suddenly become a really questionable purchase in light of this difficulty.

I have 300 gig of purchased music that can't be practically managed if resetting the device copying the entire set of data and restructuring my collection to suit Apple is the price of entry.

SMH in disappointment.

 

[Tartarus]

I appreciate the responses.

But these workarounds are, in a word, appalling.

Oooh! I just thought of a new word! When a huge company cripples elegantly simple functionality to drive a strategic agenda without proper consideration of their customers... it's "appleing". And also frustrating, maddening, and a little pathetic.

Just blowing off steam while I reassess what to do with the literally 1500 bucks I've been saving up for two years to buy the dream iphone that has suddenly become a really questionable purchase in light of this difficulty.

I have 300 gig of purchased music that can't be practically managed if resetting the device copying the entire set of data and restructuring my collection to suit Apple is the price of entry.

SMH in disappointment.

Enable Music and all your sorrows will be gone.

 

[RyanGermann]

Enable Music and all your sorrows will be gone.

Is having Apple Music enabled going to allow me to use iTunes to add and remove songs from my iPhone?

 

[RyanGermann]

Enable Music and all your sorrows will be gone.

Is having Apple Music enabled going to allow me to use iTunes to add and remove songs from my iPhone?

 

[Tartarus]

Is having Apple Music enabled going to allow me to use iTunes to add and remove songs from my iPhone?

I have a subscription to Music.
Songs that I add to iTunes automatically appear on all my devices associated with my Apple ID. I have iCloud Music Library enabled on all my devices.

If you don’t want to pay for Music, then simply don’t enable it. But also, disable “Manually manage music and video” in iTunes and specify the folder which contains all your music to be synced to your iPhone. This is also what @Sherry_B suggested in the first place.

The initial sync will take a while what with 300GB of Music but every other sync will go as fast and smooth like you’re used to from Apple. That’s what I have been doing since the beginning before Music was introduced.

 

[doogald]

Is having Apple Music enabled going to allow me to use iTunes to add and remove songs from my iPhone?

iTunes Match also uses iCloud Music Library and will allow the same for only $25/year instead of $120/year. Songs are all in the cloud and are copied to the device as you access them, so of course it will use some cellular data when you are away from WiFi and the songs are not yet downloaded (though you can also click the three dot circle control in any playlist, album, artist, genre, etc., to download the songs locally.) So, you don't add music from iTunes to the device, but any music that you add to iTunes is uploaded to iCloud Music Library and becomes available to the iPhone/iPad (or iPod Touch on WiFi).

One issue is that it's limited to 100,000 songs.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926

 

[Tartarus]

iTunes Match also uses iCloud Music Library and will allow the same for only $25/year instead of $120/year. Songs are all in the cloud and are copied to the device as you access them, so of course it will use some cellular data when you are away from WiFi and the songs are not yet downloaded (though you can also click the three dot circle control in any playlist, album, artist, genre, etc., to download the songs locally.) So, you don't add music from iTunes to the device, but any music that you add to iTunes is uploaded to iCloud Music Library and becomes available to the iPhone/iPad (or iPod Touch on WiFi).

One issue is that it's limited to 100,000 songs.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926

Exactly. I totally forgot about iTunes Match.
It’s got the same features as Music, but without the streaming part.

 

[RyanGermann]

Here's the deal:

Between the time I copied the bulk of my music to my iPhone, and now, I changed the drive letter that I use to map my network drive where my iTunes library resides.

This hadn't been a problem 'til now: I changed the drive letter ages ago, and was still able to do everything I needed to... but now, perhaps iOS 11 or iTunes 12.7 has imposed a new restriction: apparently, my iPhone thought "your iTunes library is on drive J:"... iTunes thought the library was on drive M:. So, from the iPhones and iTunes' perspective, they were not "the same library" and unbeknownst to me, "an iPhone can only sync with one Library" (not that I've ever tried, but I still never knew that... is that a long time restriction or new?)

Changing the drive letter made the iPhone think that it was an entirely different iTunes Library.

This effectively locked iTunes down w.r.t. the iPhone: the iPhone "told" iTunes that "I'm sorry, I can't let you interact with me".

The solution: in iTunes, click on the "Device" icon; go into the "Settings" on the device (the ROOT settings node, not the "Music" settings node) and turn ON the "Manually manage music" checkbox... then click "Apply"... but because the iPhone recognizes the iTunes library as a "Different Library", this action threw a warning that was ambiguously worded (to the point where the Apple Care specialist on the phone was worried I might delete my whole library off of my PC) to the effect of "This iPhone syncs with a different library: if you choose to sync with the current iTunes library, all music on your device will be deleted."

I can live with having to recopy all my music one time in order to reenable using iTunes instead of having to do it all on the iPhone.

So, I clicked this button on the prompt, and yes, all the music was wiped from the device but also all the interactions within iTunes was restored (sorting by clicking column headings, dragging, right-click options the whole bit).

So, word to the wise: newer versions of iOS or iTunes actually care what the path to your iTunes library is... never used to, but now it does.

Apple Care staff were very patient as we tried a bunch of different stuff with screen sharing: but the notion of "don't relocate your library or change the path" was not in their knowledge base... hopefully now it is.